312 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
and then to make a profit by converting the skim-milk into cheese instead of feeding it 
toswine. To accomplish this it is necessary to keep the milk sweet while it is stand- 
ing for the cream to rise. Cold water is the agent employed. At a temperature of 
about 60° the lactic ferment hardly makes any perceptible advancement. Hence, if 
milk is kept at 60° or a little below, the cream rises readily and the milk is preserved 
for along time in a good condition for cheese-making. To effect this a reservoir is made 
in the creamery with mason work laid up with water-lime or cement, and kept constantly 
fall and of even temperature by a steady stream of water from acoolspring. The milk, 
as it comes to the creamery, is strained into a small vat and thence drawn into tin pails, 18 
or 20 inches deep and eight inches in diameter, and the pails then set into the reservoir, 
which is just deep enough for the water to sise around the pails as high or a little higher 
than the surface of the milk. This is found to bea better way of keeping milk than to 
spread it out in shallow vessels. The cream rises as quick, and some contend quicker, in 
the deep as in the shallow dishes, and much less surface is exposed to be injured by 
drying. The exposure isso little that the cream always remains soft and thin, requiring 
to be dipped off instead of skimmed. The time of letting it stand in these pails varies 
in different creameries. In some the milk of one day is made into cheese the next, thus 
allowing the morning’s milk to stand twenty-four hours and the evening’s milk twelve ~ 
hours. In others it stands forty-cight and thirty-six hours. When the cream is taken 
off it is set away to sour, and at the proper time is churned by an application of steam, 
horse, or water power. It is a singular fact that after all the trials made with the 
great variety of churns that are being continually introduced, the creameries and the 
Dest butter-makers all fall back upon the old dash-churn as the best, both for quality 
of product and convenience. Patent churns are in bad repute with the creameries. 
When the butter is taken from the churns it is thoroughly washed in coo] water before 
salting. However much washing butter may be condemned by others, the practice 
works well in the creameries. The idea that water washes out the fine aroma of the 
butter seems to be more fanciful than real, and certainly much less injury. is done to 
the texture by washing out the buttermilk than by working it out. 
The working is usually done on an inclined slab, with a lever rounded on one side 
and held in its place by a universal joint at the lower end of the slab. The salting is 
generally lighter than in farm dairies, being usually only one pound of salt for 20 
pounds of butter, and the inclined slab is used in working it in. The butter made at 
the creameries is generally of superior quality, and commands a high price, and is be- 
ginning to exert a controlling influence in the market. Creameries are educating the 
public taste to a higher standard. 
Though much may be said of the excellence of creamery butter, little can be said 
of the excellence of cheese made in this class of factories. Though rich in valuable 
nutriment—that might under more faverable circumstances be at least palatable food 
—the shape in which it now usually goes to market rates it very properly with the 
poorest class of human food. It is so dry, and hard, and insipid, and indigestible as 
hardly to be reckoned as a wholesome means of sustaining life. It is little else than 
dried curd. It cures so slowly and dries out so quickly that the cheesing process is 
arrested before it is hardly begun. There is a wide field open for improvement in the 
manufacture of skim-milk cheese. The valuable flesh-forming material with which it 
abounds ought to be and will ere long be presented in more attractive forms. Ihave 
no expectation that a fancy article will be made from thoroughly skimmed milk, but 
am confident that a cheese much more palatable and wholesome than those now made 
in creameries can be made from milk in the condition in which it is there manufactured. 
The most that is needed is to make the cheesing process as complete as in curing other 
cheese. When dairymen shall have become familiar with the fact that the cheesing 
process is but the result of the continued action of the rennet upon the coagulum it 
has formed from the milk, they will find some efficient way of keeping up that action, 
however much it may be retarded by depriving the curd of the stimulating influence 
afforded by the fatty mattez in the milk. When the manufacture and curing of skim- 
milk cheese shall be adapted to the altered condition of the milk, its value will be 
greatly enhanced. But even now the dried curd, if I may so call it, makes a better 
return than can be made by feeding the milk to pigs or calves. It requires just about 
four times as much milk to make a pound of pork or veal as it does to make a pourd 
of skim cheese, while there is but little difference in their market value. The quality 
of milk varies so much that no precise results can be stated when it is worked up in the 
different ways of manufacturing it, but they will not vary much from the following: 
Ten thousand pounds of milk, of average quality, will make 1,025 pounds whole-millk 
cheese. The same quantity, if partially skimmed, will make 100 pounds butter and 
975 pounds cheese that will scarcely differ from whole-milk cheese. If deeper skimmed, 
it will make 250 to 300 pounds butter and 700 to 775 pounds skim cheese; or, if thor- 
oughly skimmed, it would make 350 to 370 pounds butter and 600 to 660 pounds skim 
cheese. The cheese will vary considerably with the varying amount of milk taken off 
with the cream. If the whole-milk cheese be reckoned at 15 cents per pound, the 
partially skimmed will be worth 14 to 14} cents, the deeper skimming about 9 cents, 
